


carry me down to the water

by katineto (mistalagan)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Character Death, Human Sacrifice, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 05:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16549817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistalagan/pseuds/katineto
Summary: They choose Yuuri in the early spring, just as the plum trees are beginning to bloom, just after another hard winter and three unbroken years of hunger. His sister’s jaw clenches, his father’s smile freezes, his mother’s calloused hands go limp. They do not protest.They say they chose him for his stature, for his bright eyes, for his quietness and kindness: more practically, for the fact that he has no family to support. They say they consulted the signs and portents, counted the days, checked the hour of his birth, and knew it must be him.The whispers go like this: they chose him for his standoffishness, his strangeness, because the Katsuki family have never been fishermen and do not understand the pain of losing a son to the sea.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr in April 2018. Reformatted to fit your screen.

They choose Yuuri in the early spring, just as the plum trees are beginning to bloom, just after another hard winter and three unbroken years of hunger. His sister’s jaw clenches, his father’s smile freezes, his mother’s calloused hands go limp. They do not protest.

They say they chose him for his stature, for his bright eyes, for his quietness and kindness: more practically, for the fact that he has no family to support. They say they consulted the signs and portents, counted the days, checked the hour of his birth, and knew it must be him.

The whispers go like this: they chose him for his standoffishness, his strangeness, because the Katsuki family have never been fishermen and do not understand the pain of losing a son to the sea.

 

In the summer, they ply him with rich food, fine clothing, all the earthly luxuries they can provide. They take him from the inn and give him his own lonely dwelling, where the people bring him offerings and prayers.

The food seems tasteless. In the heat of summer, he misses the warmth of the springs.

“There’s no need for you to be untouched,” they say meaningfully, drawing his gaze to his childhood friend, young and lovely and only recently a mother. “Offerings come in all kinds,” they say, and make it clear he would not be refused. He flushes and flinches and shakes his head, and at night he dreams and wakes up ashamed.

In the fall, they teach him all the things he never learned as an innkeeper’s son; tides and weather, what to take and what to throw back, how to weave a net and repair a hull. There aren’t enough days to learn a lifetime of work, but he tries.

Some nights, he is angry. Some nights, he is afraid. But he was always aimless, wasn’t he? Now he knows for what purpose he was born.

 

(They always go bad, after a while. Some take longer than others. But they always go bad, and there is always someone new.)

 

There’s no point in running away. They’d shun his family, pick someone else. Besides, where would he go?

 

When she was a little girl, Yuuko almost drowned. “It’s not painful,” she promises. “It’s cold, and then it’s like going to sleep.” She doesn’t turn her head in time to keep him from seeing her tears.

 

This year’s winter, the storms are yet worse. He eats plain rice, pickled plums, and just the right kinds of herbs and medicines. He drinks tea and meditates and grows thin.

He was never very good at meditation.

One day, he steps out onto the surface of a frozen pond, listening to the ice crackle as he walks. The surface is slippery, smooth, and he trips over it gracefully, almost smiling. But too soon, they find him, and coax him to the shore with nervous laughter. “Careful!” they cry. “Careful, please.”

When he was young, his mother used to go down to the sea, and talk to it as if speaking to an old friend. She goes again now for the first time in years. “Take care of him,” she begs, “Don’t let him be alone.”

 

He does not see the plum trees blossom the next spring.

He fasts for three days. The last morning, he drinks sweet rice wine, laced with something stronger. He drinks, drinks, until he fumbles with the cup, lets it fall and shatter on the stone floor, and stares blankly at its remains. “One more,” they say, tipping a new cup to his unresisting lips. He walks with two men supporting him, stumbling, clumsy.

In richer places, they would cover him in gold and silk, dust him in sweet perfumes, paint his lips and eyes. Here, they offer up the things that are precious to them: carefully patterned clothing, smooth stones sewn into the fabric; porcelain charms that clink against each other with each shuffling step; whalebone jewelry, intricately carved. The finest of fishhooks cling tightly in his flesh. The strongest of rope binds his arms in careful patterns, like a fisherman’s net.

The second-to-last time Mari sees her brother, his eyes are glassy and unfocused. He does not recognize her when she calls.

They sing as they lead him to the cliff, a beautiful place, a proper place; there are no rocks below, only water.

The people are silent, expectant, but the wind howls.

He can’t take the last step.

The cliff drops sharply below him, and the fall seems so long, forever and ever.

He can’t breathe. He chokes on air. His heart tramples over his lungs.

He can’t take the last step.

He can’t.

The hand that pushes him is not gentle.

His bones break on the waves, but the fall does not kill him. The cold shocks him mercilessly sober. He kicks and twists, but he is weak, uncoordinated, and his arms are tied. His next breath is salt and foam.

Yuuko lied.

Yuuri does not wake until his bones, wrapped in seaweed and picked over curiously by small crawling things, have been stripped free of flesh and pain.


	2. Chapter 2

When Yuuri wakes, he flexes fingers made of herring scales, blinks algal lashes over wet seal’s eyes. She is waiting for him.

Her hair is seagrass, her arms currents, her curves shaped by the rising moon. Her whale-song voice is deep and ponderous. “I will show you,” she hums, “how to do all they ask of you,” and later, her mouth wide in an orca’s grin, “You will learn for yourself how not to.”

When she dances, the sea dances. The fish flow in darting patterns around her, through her; the waves swell as she breathes. She shows him the shape of the hulls above, the color underwater in a storm, the quick, wild flash of lightning striking near the shore. He learns more in each moment under her tutelage than he did in months of lessons.

His heartbeat is the back-and-forth swish of water through kelp forests. His belly is the cool dark depths, vast and sparse and cavernous. His limbs are undersea waterfalls, eddies and ripples, leaping waves.

When he dances, the sea dances. She is content to watch. “Where will you go?” he asks. “What will you do?” She smiles, wide and longing; she stays, perhaps, as long as she is able; soon she is gone with no reply.

 

He does all they ask of him. Boats that should have foundered find themselves home, and nets are packed to bursting. He sends the whales ashore, fat and full with the sea’s bounty. He guides the divers’ eyes and hands, leaving them laden with pearls and urchins.

“Katsuki!” they laugh, clapping Toshiya on the back, “Look what our god does for us, how rich we are; pour another round, and be happy!” He fills their cups dutifully, not looking them in the eye, and murmurs, “Yuuri always did do his best.”

Sometimes, instead, someone looks on him with pity. “He’s not really dead, you know,” they say, “He’s more alive now than he ever was before.”

“Yes, of course,” he agrees, staring past them at the hunched over figure of his wife.

They are not supposed to keep his memory in their shrine, because he is not and never will be dead. They are not supposed to call him their son, or record him as part of the family, because he was always a god who only lived with them for a time.

They do not do what they are supposed to do. They keep him in their shrine, a blank stone tablet which only they understand. Maybe others can reconcile the creature that feeds them, shelters them, cradles them in its broad arms, with the anxious little boy who brought home strays and complained about the washing; maybe others can say that the latter always was the former. For them, there was Yuuri, and now there is the god.

 

He still learns. What was overwhelming, impossible at first becomes routine, even joyful. He plays games; sweeps stranger creatures than whales up from the depths as gifts, lets the little ones struggle free from the nets. He plucks a child from the shore and sets her safely back on land.

When he dances, he makes music; the crash of waves against rocky ledge, their softer susurration on the sandy shore. The high, mournful cry of the gulls in descant. The chorusing barks of sea lions resting, rafting, tumbling into the water. The crack of thunder that slices through the wind and patter of hard rain.

Days and days and days pass by, but what is a day to something for which even the months seem small and petty?

When he dances, he makes music; the swell and thrum of saltwater mountains, the singing silence of windless days. The high and desperate cries from shore. The chorusing barks of men in tandem, working, struggling, tumbling into the water. The crack of a useless mast that slices shatteringly downward.

So close to death, they can see him; not his true form, vast and magnificent, but the echo of something much smaller. Shattered ribs and twisted spine, bloated flesh sloughing away, fishhooks and rope trailing behind. Empty, curious eye sockets watching, not with malice, but not with pity either.

He plays games; lets the little ones struggle free. Sweeps stranger gifts than whales up from the depths, ruined bodies, cracked oars.

The nets still come up full, sometimes. Some boats have always been lost.

 

Mari’s husband is young and strong. She does not love him, but he works hard. He teaches their children to speak of the god carefully, and not to offend it.

Her parents, less able to work now, still keep their son, a blank stone tablet, in their shrine. Maybe others can reconcile the creature that feeds them, watches them, grips them tight with the shy little boy who listened with wide eyes to their guests’ wild stories and hated to lose; maybe others can say that the latter always was the former. For them there was Yuuri, and now there is the god.

(They always go bad, after a while. Some take longer than others. But they always go bad, and there is always someone new.)

 

The woman they send him is not so young as he was, once. He waits for her to find her form, to curl mussel-shell toes and lick a hungry tongue across eel-sharp teeth. She looks, perhaps, familiar. He tells her, “I will show you how to do all they ask of you,” and softer, “One day you will forget.”

Her eyes flash with the light of the sun through the water. “My father goes to sea,” she says, “My sisters go to sea. I will not forget.”

“Maybe not,” he says, wistful, and shows her how to keep them safe.

“What will you do?” she asks him, then. “Where will you go?” He doesn’t know, so he says nothing. He stays as long as he is able, and then he leaves.

 

He is, fundamentally, a littoral creature; he goes out as far as the fishers go, and only laps against the shore with seafoam and the hungry beaks of the birds. He follows the coast to colder, stranger waters. Some places have their own sea-gods. He avoids them. Maybe he spends time looking for his teacher. If so, he never finds her.

When he dances, he makes music. It is much the same everywhere he goes.

Months and months and months pass by, but what is a month to something for which even the years seem small and petty?

 

Blood trickles into the water at the beach, and the burnt remains of ships still float upon the tide. Yuuri picks his way around these things, curious.

Through beady birds’ eyes he sees him, perched carelessly among the dead. He looks like a man, but is not a man; nor is he a sea-god, though his hair shimmers like schooling fish and his eyes are old and deep as the ocean.

Those eyes catch the birds’, and the man-who-is-not turns to watch the water.

The sweep of his glance encompasses the birds and the spray and the tide, the things that skitter and swim, the promise of unseen currents that drag and gallop out to sea.

His smile is slow. His voice is the clarion call of horns, the clash and crash of bronze and iron, the low wet rattle of a final breath. “Hello,” he purrs, rising, and picks his way through the slain with delicate footsteps. He kneels to drag his fingers through the wet sand, and looks Yuuri in the eye.

Yuuri shivers at his touch, pulling back, and flees.


	3. Chapter 3

Who follows whom, Yuuri doesn’t know. They meet on derelicts crippled by mutiny, during lightning quick raids on the shoreline, at the site of a jealous lovers’ spat. Every time, the man-who-is-not reaches out. Eventually, Yuuri stops running.

 

“What are you?” he asks, at last.

The man tilts his head. “I’m like you.”

“What did they make you for?” he asks, instead.

That slow, sweet grin. “Victory in battle,” he says, standing on the back of a fallen soldier. “You can call me Victor, if you like.”

“Did it work?” Yuuri asks, among the carnage.

His eyebrows quirk. “For a little while. What did they make you for?”

A ship drifts helplessly against the rocks. “A fine harvest, and safety at sea.”

When Victor laughs, his teeth are sharp and white. “Did it work?”

“…For a little while.”

 

Victor teaches him to pull his form together, retracting the wide reaches of himself into something visible and finite. “Lovely,” Victor breathes, caressing one sea-ravaged cheekbone, fluttering his gaze down to peer at scraps of fabric and impossibly ruined lungs. “I’ll show you mine,” he offers, and blood runs down his chest and side, pierced through by sword and spear; blood trickles over his hands and feet from knives driven into his wrists and ankles.

Victor genuinely seems to believe he is lovely, but Yuuri finds himself dissatisfied; this dead body is not something he ever remembers being, not really. He practices shaping himself, bone and meat and skin, until his face is his own again, hale and whole, illusion though it may be.

“Lovely,” Victor repeats, when he first sees this, shamelessly exploring Yuuri’s shape with eyes and hands; Yuuri lets him. “Lovely,” he says, when Yuuri stretches out into something sleek and dark and deadly with grinning teeth. “Lovely,” when he is simply the edges of waves breaking on the shore, lapping against Victor’s bare feet.

Victor is speechless when he sees Yuuri dance.

(When Victor dances, people die.)

They are not quite capable of awe, only something like it; that is enough.

 

Who follows whom, Yuuri doesn’t know. He can draw Victor down to the depths of the ocean, showing him the sheer profusion of life, glittering fish, slick kelp, light peeking through the heavy press of darkness; with Victor by his side, Yuuri can walk upon lands he never dreamed possible, feel earth solid beneath his feet. Where Victor passes, things bristle and bare their teeth; where Yuuri steps, he leaves damp footprints behind.

He meets others, all startlingly new, and asks them all the same. “Fertility,” purrs one, lounging on a bed of grass; “Luck,” smiles another, his grin perpetual, “Protection,” say the twins in unison, their tiny bodies buried beneath city walls. “Victory,” spits one, resplendent in brilliant armor, “in _battle_ ,” not deigning to look Victor in the eye. And “Did it work?” he asks, and those who are already lost repeat the same, “For a little while,” and those who still receive worship, “For now,” and the last, a snarled “ _Yes._ ”

“My family loved me,” Yuuri remembers, staring up at an endless sky.

“Mine didn’t,” Victor confesses, reverting back to his sacrificial form, too-pale skin and twisted foot.

They are not quite capable of grief, only something like it: that is enough.

 

In general, he is not particularly drawn back to the place where he was made. Somehow, though, he finds himself there, and walks up from the seafloor to the shore, leaves damp footprints through the unfamiliar streets of the town. It’s bigger than it was; the patterns of the buildings are different. If anyone sees him, it’s with an uncanny chill and the oppressive desire to look away.

The gate is guarded by statues and symbols, meant to keep evil spirits out. It has no effect on Yuuri. Victor, who has walked here by his side, does not try to pass through.

This place is bigger, too, but the part where the family lives is much the same. He pauses by the shrine; as he does, a candle flickers, a trail of smoke drawn faintly towards him.

Deep inside the house, a woman is laying on her deathbed in a darkened room. When she looks, she sees him; not as the vast and wild thing he is, nor as a pitiful, ruined body, nor even as a doomed youth waiting for death, but as a little boy with a round face and bright eyes.

“Have you come for me, then?” she croaks.

He shakes his head, and holds her hand. It is still warm, and its warmth worms its way through his cold limbs. They sit quietly, for a time. When her breath rattles in her throat, he soothes the tremors away; when pain wracks her stomach, he swallows it in her stead.

When she speaks again, it’s with a glint of sarcasm on her wrinkled face. “Been a while.”

“Too long,” he replies. “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head at that, frowning with all the displeasure of the old and sick. “Shouldn’t be.” Her frown turns soft. “Is it really you?”

“I think so,” he says, after a moment. “Most of me, anyway.”

She peers up at him, swallowing, something wickedly pleased in her eyes to go along with the guilt. “They don’t do it anymore, you know.”

He didn’t know. “Why not?”

“The northerners,” she says, as if it’s self-explanatory. When his face remains puzzled, she continues. “There was war. They don’t do it up there, anymore, so we don’t do it down here. If you do—“ she wraps her hand around her throat—“they’ll hang you.”

It still seems like a sacrifice, to Yuuri, only to order, and law, and the northerners’ sense of justice, rather than to the raging sea.

“Things change, here,” she says. “You haven’t changed.”

“I think I have,” he says, thinking of the cold, and corpses.

“No,” she says, and he shrugs. It was always useless arguing with her, anyway, as much as he tried.

“Is it lonely?” she sighs, and he’s not sure whether she’s asking about him, or about her.

“No,” he says, thinking of blue eyes, and corpses.

“Good,” she says, satisfied, and she was asking about him after all.

Some time later, a harried young woman peers in, groaning at the water on the floor. “Dog must have tracked the rain in again,” she sighs, flicking her gaze up to the woman, whose gaze is lost to somewhere very far away. “Grandmama? Who were you talking to?”

Three days later, an old woman dies, and in the family shrine a forgotten stone tablet cracks in two.

 

Victor waits for him at the gate, patient; a few hours are nothing to them, after all.

“Why me?” Yuuri asks, when he sees him. “Why not anyone else?”

“I could ask the same,” and his smile is sly when Yuuri wrinkles his nose in distaste.

“You saw me, and you kept coming back,” he says later, half a world away. “Is that enough?”

They are not quite capable of love, only something like it.

When they dance, nations fall, and the tide rises.

 


End file.
